When Victor Ghaben was growing up, a PG&E service station occupied 1535 Bonanza St. in Walnut Creek. In its current incarnation as Stereo 41, the whitewashed brick façade is the only remaining sign of its institutional origins. Ghaben and his business partner, Berk Gibbs, have transformed the space into a music lounge and restaurant. One that evokes sultry nights out at supper clubs from earlier and decidedly mellower eras. When we spoke on the phone, Ghaben described the architecture’s influence on the interior design, saying: “It’s got a mid-century build to it and aesthetic, and we kind of played off that with the vibe inside. It’s sexy. It’s modern.”
Ghaben’s parents met while working at a nearby restaurant in downtown Walnut Creek. While his parents worked, Ghaben would cross the street to play in the service station’s open courtyard. When PG&E later moved out, the building remained vacant for many years until Ghaben’s sister, Sofia, brought it to his attention.
Ghaben and Gibbs are part of an extended family of restaurateurs. Together, they co-founded World Famous Hotboys, a fast-casual restaurant that serves fried-chicken sandwiches. Ghaben’s sister and brother-in-law operate Lita in Walnut Creek, a Latin Caribbean restaurant down the street. Opening Stereo 41 was a collaborative effort that also included Ghaben’s wife, Natalie Alkire. “We wanted to do something that was nightlife-leaning but not a straight-up club,” he said.
Ghaben and Gibbs had professional music backgrounds before they started Hotboys. “There was no hi-fi bar in the area,” Ghaben said. “And we both have massive vinyl collections, and we’re both lifetime turntablists and DJs.” Making a supper club an integral part of Stereo 41 was a natural extension of their success with Hotboys, which currently operates out of seven locations.
Hotboys started as a pop-up out of Ghaben’s backyard. Their first brick-and-mortar opened at the end of 2019, about three months before the pandemic. “We opened with a lot of steam. We had lines down the block every day,” he recalled. After businesses reopened, Hotboys shifted to online orders and contactless pick-ups. “People would show up with friends and they would just post a picnic table up in our parking lot,” Ghaben said.
Stereo 41’s menu launched with Middle Eastern and Asian dishes, but that wasn’t the original plan. “We just wanted to make a contemporary restaurant that was making interesting California cuisine,” Ghaben said. With chef Jonathan De La Torre at the helm, the menu has since evolved and now serves Southern cuisine. “Basically, Jonathan seemed like an appropriate fit being that he was previously at Mourad as the executive sous chef there,” Ghaben said.
Before they hired De La Torre, Snail Bar’s Andres Giraldo Florez acted as a consultant chef. At the time De La Torre, who worked at a hotel in San Francisco, was looking for an opportunity to get back into a full-time restaurant. Florez reached out to him to talk about bringing him in to work at Stereo 41 and the menu he was developing for it. Once Florez’s stint ended—he’s currently in France starting a rural auberge—De La Torre said he “got full control of the menu.”
Like Ghaben and Gibbs, De La Torre had his own pop-up. Serene’s focus was on vegetables, grains and seafood. “It was mostly vegan and vegetarian, with slight nuances of pescatarianism,” De La Torre said. “I love using spices and then anything I can make with it, that’s what it will be—whether it tastes like an Indian curry or like Ethiopian doro wat.”
When the pandemic hit, he had to shut everything down. Since then, Serene has been on an indefinite hiatus. But the chef would like to revisit the idea at some point. “I want to retweak it to make it more financially viable,” he said. “Instead of it just being a straightforward restaurant, I would rather incorporate a wine program, to turn it into a wine bar.”
The brunch menu at Stereo 41 showcases De La Torre’s familial ties to Southern food. He said the late-morning favorites are Hoppin’ Johns & Eggs, Eggs in Purgatory, Fried Chicken & a Waffle and Honey Fried French Toast. During dinner hours, customers are responding especially well to two dishes: fried chicken and short ribs.
On the weekends, the DJ starts somewhere between 7-9pm. And then, Ghaben said, it ramps up. “If you’re more on the quiet side, then you get there at 7pm and you’ll start to notice it gradually get up there. And by 9-10pm people start funneling in for bar hours, and it’s a blast,” he said. “It’s just a really awesome mix of people, all age groups, ethnicities, genders represented. It’s just people dancing, having a great time.”
Stereo 41, 1535 Bonanza St., Walnut Creek. Open every day with varied hours. stereo41.com
